Last week, I was wrapping some C++ code for a customer and I was surprised that my code did not work properly. I'm not a C++ programmer and thus this error might have been a typical gotcha but still this was a very surprising behavior.

The code in question was:

<c>void my_routine (CppClass my_obj, int buffer_count, char * buffer) { const char * l_cstr = my_obj->getName().c_str();

EiffelStudio 6.2 has just been released. For those who haven't followed the intermediate releases, here is an idea of what is included:

• Added new contract editor tool to ease edition of contracts on routines and classes.
• Added Eiffel Information System which let you connect external documentation to your Eiffel code and vice versa.

A while ago I've heard about Haiku through an online Google Tech Talk. I was immediately captivated because Haiku is actually a clone of BeOS and I definitely remember the BeOS days. It was when Mac OS was not up to the task anymore and BeOS seemed a promising alternative.

Facts

It's unlike me to complain (or maybe it's not, up to you to decide), but in the past few years it seems that software vendors have decided what was best for me and I really do not like this, especially when it affects 100% of the time I'm in front of my computer.

I don't know if you are like me but often when you redefine a feature, I used to copy/paste the comments so that I still know what the feature is supposed to do in english terms (in addition to the contracts of course). In 6.2, we are introducing a new facility so that in the editor and in the flat-view of the feature you do not have to do the copy/paste.

A week ago, we started the cycle of intermediate releases of 6.2. They can be found on the EiffelStudio development site at http://eiffelstudio.origo.ethz.ch.

EiffelStudio 6.1 has just been released. For those who haven't followed the intermediate releases, here is an idea of what is included:

• New default layout for EiffelStudio tools to highlight the most common used tools whereas other tools are still available at the bottom or via the View menu.

A new feature of the 6.1 release of EiffelStudio appears in the Console tool. Basically in addition of what you could do before, you can also insert the following:

1. {A}
2. @{A}
3. {A}.f

where A is an Eiffel class and f a feature of A.

The meanings are:

1. {A}: location of a file containing a copy of the text of class A.

When you have a performance problem, profiling an application will help you figure out where the bottleneck is. However, most profiling tool have a tendency to slow down the execution by a significant factor and EiffelStudio is unfortunately no different.

Have you heard about the One Laptop Per Child initiative (also known as the $100 laptop). If not, check out http://www.laptop.org for more information. The reason why I'm mentioning it is simple, EiffelStudio is running on it.

We received our test laptop last week and installed the standard delivery of EiffelStudio 6.0 for Linux-x86. See below for a picture of the laptop with EiffelStudio: